State of Working X

Similar to the Economic Policy Institute’s State of Working America, the State of Working XX (SWXX) is a series of reports produced by state EARN groups describing the economic conditions for working families in their state. SWXX reports provide a comprehensive description of state economic conditions, often with a focus on labor market conditions. SWXX reports provide data and analysis on job growth, unemployment, wages, incomes, poverty rates, taxes, wealth, immigration, and other issue areas relevant to current state economic conditions and policy discussions. Many SWXX reports also include tailored and timely policy recommendations for strengthening economic conditions for workers in each state.

Publications

State of Working Vermont 2017

How are Vermont’s workers and their families doing?

Economic growth is tepid, but even the modest gains are not making it to most Vermonters’ paychecks. While the share of families struggling financially might not be as large as elsewhere, it continues to creep up. And while the unemployment rate is low, fewer people are working.

In other words, Vermonters are doing about as well, or as poorly, as they’ve done for more than a decade.

Why no progress? Part of the reason is that many policymakers are thinking backwards. They hope that when and if the economy improves, wages and tax receipts will rise, the state will be able to meet its residents’ needs, and Vermont’s prosperity will be more broadly shared. The data in this report suggest otherwise. To get the trend lines moving in the right direction, we need to flip our thinking—to start with the premise that addressing the needs of all workers and families is the way to strengthen the economy.

State of Working Colorado

Colorado has one of the strongest performing economies in the country. Job growth has been robust for the past several years, consistently ranking Colorado among the top states for job creation. The unemployment rate has dropped steadily since 2010 to 3.3 percent in 2016. Real median household income continues to grow and is now slightly above the pre-recession level. And poverty rates have fallen since 2012, dropping to 11 percent in 2016.

Yet, this report points to several challenges to achieving an economic recovery in Colorado that is broadly shared and enduring:

  • The median hourly wage has been falling or flat since the recovery began.
  • Economic gains are increasingly concentrated among a small share of high earners in the state.
  • While jobs have returned to the state, not all workers have returned to work.
  • Colorado is increasingly becoming a multiracial state with a persistent race-based economic divide.

Utah Economic Benchmarking Project 2017

The goal of the Working Families Benchmarking Project is to identify economic and related issues affecting Utah families and examine them through a comparative lens, evaluating Utah using a peer state as a benchmark. Many existing economic comparison studies and rankings look at the economy as a whole or at its impact on specific sectors or employers. This project seeks to augment those very useful comparisons by focusing on how the economy is experienced by moderate- and lower-income families. It is these families whose children are most at risk of not achieving their potential in school and later in the workplace. Thus, how they experience the economy is of particular interest to Voices for Utah Children.

The State of Working Connecticut (2017)

Children do well when families do well, and families do well in part when the economy provides jobs with fair wages and good benefits. Yet since the Great Recession, the share of well-paying jobs in Connecticut has shrunk, and the state’s lagging economic recovery has left many—including youth, black workers, and the less educated—behind. In many cases, disparities between the most disadvantaged workers and the rest have increased.

In this report, we evaluate the state’s economy through three measures: labor force, jobs, and wages.